


Cheat Code

by mousapelli



Category: ACCA13区監察課 | ACCA 13-ku Kansatsuka
Genre: Drinking Games, Drunken Confessions, M/M, there's smoking but no bread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:17:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9980036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Nino stumbled over a method to get infinity love confessions out of Jean (spoiler: it's getting him drunk).





	

**Author's Note:**

> I mainlined this entire series in one evening and I was desperate to throw this down before new episodes messed up some part of it.
> 
> ETA: uh so I wrote this just before episode 8, and now that 8 defined the length of the age gap between Jean in Nino it's...not what I thought haha. I'M SORRY. I DIDN'T KNOW. But I'm not walking it back because I still think all of this is true, in fact it's probably all more true. But if I hadn't been writing mid-season, I probably wouldn't have written this at all because yikes.

The first time Nino gets Jean drunk, really good and drunk, he discovers something interesting. 

He's been working Jean up to it, slow, mastering the art of getting him sloshed enough to talk more easily without accidentally getting himself too drunk to ask any of the right questions. They've been playing Truth or Dare, if that could be any more stereotypically high school, but Jean always picks Truth anyway, so it's actually perfect. 

"Is there someone you like?" Nino asks. He isn't expecting anything much, but it's the usual question teenagers ask each other. Jean's eyebrows knit together over glassy blue eyes, sucking his lower lip into mouth. "Don't lie, that's cheating."

"Yes," Jean answers, making Nino raise an eyebrow. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare," Nino says, because he knows what the question will be, surely, if he says truth. 

"I dare you to tell me who you like," Jean says, brows still furrowed.

Nino thinks about duty and fuzzy cream uniform sweaters and secrets and glassy blue eyes. "That's not how the game works."

"Dare me to, then."

"It's not your turn," Nino protests, but Jean is already climbing into his lap, warm and heavy. "Jean, what are you doing?"

"Ask me," Jean demands. His gaze is low-lidded as ever, but the weight of presses down on Nino's chest, dead center, or slightly to the left. " _Ask_."

"Truth or dare?" Nino asks, not the right question at all. 

"I like you," Jean answers, and crushes their mouths together. Nino is frozen, Jean undeterred, until finally Nino curls fingers in the softness of Jean's sweater and kisses back. It's wet and unpracticed and dangerous, and Nino never wants anything else. 

They don't get much farther before Jean falls asleep between kisses and murmured questions, all truths. Nino stumbles home in the dark drunk off something much better than the cheap, sweet white that Jean seems to prefer. 

That's not the interesting part. It's that in the morning, Jean remembers none of it. 

"The fuck happened to my sweater," he grumbles when Nino meets him for their walk to school, trying to smooth out the way it's stretched and won't lie flat. Nino watches him fuss with it impassively, remembering the soft slide of it between his fingertips. The static of Jean's hair when they pulled it over his head. 

"Did you sleep in it?" Nino asks, testing. Jean tilts his head, frowning, trying to remember. 

"I woke up in just my shirt…" Jean's hand drifts up to the corner of his mouth, as if some part of him does remember. Then he drops it, scowling. "I can't remember a thing. Ugh, my head is killing me, this is all your fault."

"Yes, it certainly is," Nino says, mostly to himself. It's for the best, he tells himself. He ignores the part, an ugly part, that whispers Jean would be so easy to keep safe if Nino kept him as close as a lover. 

It's ugly because it's true. 

But then it happens again, a few weeks later. Jean is slumped against Nino on the couch this time, soundly buzzed, head on Nino's shoulder, watching a late night movie with the sound down too low to hear properly so that they don't wake Lotta. When a commercial comes on, Jean tilts his had back to look at Nino, the flush of his cheeks obvious even in the blue light of the television. 

"I've just remembered," Jean says, as if he's thought of someplace he was meant to be. "I like you. Nino, I like you."

It's Nino who kisses Jean that time, who presses Jean down into the cushions of the couch and kisses him until his lips are stinging and wet, half the buttons of his shirt undone, Nino's hair wild from Jean's fingers. Nino has to force himself to stop, his forehead against Jean's bare shoulder and drawing deep, slow breaths. He leaves Jean to sleep it off on the couch and takes the bed for himself, where everything smells of Jean. 

A few weeks after that, Nino tries it himself, and it's not as easy as he'd imagined it would be, especially given that he already knows Jean's feelings. He trips over the words, stuck in his throat where they burn like the whiskey they've been passing back and forth, fingers curling into frustrated fists. Jean lights up like the sun, though, and the "Me too," he mutters against Nino's mouth tastes a lot better than the metallic rim of the flask. 

His second attempt goes more smoothly; the third is barely out of his mouth before Jean shoves him down onto his back. 

They never talk about it sober. In Suitsu, Jean swipes a smudge of chocolate off Nino's cheek and Nino kisses him in broad daylight. They fuck the first time after a scare Yakkara; Nino drops his camera for his pistol a fraction of a second too slow, leaving Jean pale and lighting up his next cigarette with shaking hands. By the time Jean makes it home to Badon, Nino can't wait long enough for Jean to be drunk, desperate to feel anything besides the way his heart's been racing for thirty-six hours. They pass a cigarette back and forth afterwards, watching the smoke drift to the ceiling, and in the morning Lotta tries to hide her smile in her teacup and mostly fails. 

It's all a distraction, Nino knows, and it's dangerous. He doesn't see how he can stop it when his job is to watch Jean, to know him better than anyone else. It's a car crash waiting to happen, a train wreck. It stretches the very limits of credibility that Jean still doesn't know that he's the one driving this Titanic right towards the iceberg, but a month later Jean gets a promotion he doesn't want and gets absolutely lit on the honeyed brandy that came with it. He crawls into Nino's lap, unbuttoned shirt hanging from his shoulders, and tells him that Nino's the place he feels safest, the only place. 

It cuts straight through Nino's core, and he lets his head tip back to stare at the ceiling. Maybe this would be easier if he were just as drunk as Jean, but he's lost the knack of it, too used to twirling all the plates at once while still holding Jean steady at the center. 

"You're a fucking hazard," Nino manages at last. Jean chuckles, mouth against Nino's throat. 

In the morning, Jean is a ball of misery, staring up at Nino like he's lost. Nino empathizes with the feeling. 

"There's something important," Jean says, voice like gravel. "I've forgotten it."

Nino can only smile at him, indulgent. His fingers itch for his camera. "They say if you get drunk again, you'll remember."

"That has to be a lie, because I'm definitely still drunk." Jean flings an arm over his eyes. They lie in bed for five minutes, ten, fifteen. "In high school, you used to get me drunk too. Truth or dare?"

"I remember," Nino says. His fingers flex at the memory of soft wool, the static of Jean's hair. 

"No, I'm asking. Truth or dare?" He lowers his arm just enough to peer over it. 

"You already know the answer," Nino tells him, wondering if this is it, the end of the game. He doesn't want it to end, he realizes; he's afraid of what will happen when they run out of do-overs. 

But the end isn't today, because Jean rolls onto his side and complains that Nino never plays it right, that he's going to be sick. Nino rolls along with him, curling up along Jean's back and rubbing his stomach until Jean falls back asleep, fitful but unconscious enough. 

"I like you," Nino murmurs against the back of his neck, the words smooth from practice, like pebbles the ocean rolls onto the beach and then sweeps away again. 

Nino keeps all of Jean's secrets anyway. He'll keep this one for as long as he can.


End file.
